The Chief Executive of UK supermarket giant J Sainsbury, Justin King, presented positive results to investors in the middle of November 2008. This news appeared to be particularly welcome in the midst of what appears to be the commencement of a global recession.
J. Sainsbury appears to be making progress in its core supermarket space and has been fighting back at the super-giant of Tesco. In its recent past, Sainsbury’s started offering personal financial products, such as:
- Sainsbury’s personal loans
- Sainsbury’s car insurance
- Sainsbury’s travel insurance
- and Sainsbury’s credit cards.
This has been the approach of many main street supermarkets, who believe that they have unique relationships with their consumers, which allow them to cross sell a broad range of non-food related products.
The risk from the market is often that a business adopting this approach may lose focus on its core competencies and core markets. However, on the face of it Sainsbury’s appears to be weathering the global storm, for now anyway. Other traditional UK banks will also, no doubt, be maintaining a close eye on any market share that the supermarket banks manage to steal from them.
Related posts:
